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Comment by roryokane | Hacker News Reader

I dislike the story form too, and I can explain why. The style gives the impression that Reginald is claiming "this really happened, and those people used this technique, and they lived happily ever after – so if it worked for them, it will work for you; give this technique a try". But this tale never happened, so that implied argument is a lie. This story forces me to put on my "disbelieve, disbelieve, disbelieve" mental filters as I read, so I can remind myself that the story does not have the grounds in reality it claims, lest I believe it wrongly. This extra effort would not be necessary if Reginald just claimed what he claims straight out, and then perhaps described his grounds for belief in those claims. The unnecessary extra effort of skepticality is why I don't like the story form in this case.

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The style gives the impression that Raganwald is claiming "this really happened, and those people used this technique, and they lived happily ever after – so if it worked for them, it will work for you; give this technique a try

Respectfully, no it doesn’t. Try showing the story to one hundred randomly selected people and ask whether they think this really happened. I think you will find that there are a few people who have a certain type of extremely literal brain who don’t take well to parables, to satire, or anything else that isn’t a direct recitation of facts.

The fact that such people are in a minority doesn’t invalidate their (or your) feelings, but it is important to recognize that the feelings you have are not universal, just as I must recognize that not everybody likes the format.

I found the style grating as well, but not because I thought it might have happened or even that you intended for me to think so. It was more that I found the parable style condescending. Heavy-handed and self-indulgent are a couple of hyphenated terms that might apply to some small extent.

I probably wouldn't have copped to it quite as fast if you hadn't named one of the characters Bertie Wooster, which was a lovely bit of signaling. Good job there.

I don't like that we can't question this story because it's fictional. It has legs because of the way it is written, but no one can jab or poke at it without the obvious "well, it's just a story, man" line. I hate outs like that. It's been mentioned that there is an overall religious feel to these articles. I think it's because religion always has an out when it needs to explain something using evidence. Then there is the article title, "I don't hire unlucky people" with "raganwald's posterous" as the header. Not sure how someone could glance at this and determine it was fictional - but I think you know that.

> The fact that such people are in a minority doesn’t invalidate their (or your) feelings

Well, we don't know if they are the minority or not. No one has really taken a poll. I'll say I've found the same lineage in your articles. They tend to play on the emotionally-binding do the right thing narrative - which is fine, but the articles always conclude with this overall "so that's why you have to do it this way" feeling. Morals aside, there's really no validation to these ideas. It's one thing to tell a story and have a happy ending, but the subject matter is often timely and succinct to current events - making it (in perspective of the moment) newsworthy. I understand it is easy to talk around that, so I guess one would have to ask "Why do you write in this way?". If your articles are politically-driven, then why write fiction? If story-telling is your angle, why the call to arms narrative?

This isn't to say your writing isn't good - to the contrary. But if we're talking about whether your articles could be confusing to some – I'd say I agree.

If you want evidence, I think you should look elsewhere besides Hacker News. It’s a nice place full of very smart people, but posts containing empirical evidence gathered under controlled conditions are few and far between.

I've read plenty of articles about political, corporate, structural viewpoints – all with details of recent experience, personal findings and data on HN. I'd say fictional short-stories would be the odd man out at HN.

How does it being fiction stop people jabbing and poking at it? And how have you read this far down the thread and still held that conclusion?

As for glancing at it and knowing that it is fictional, it is fairly obvious in the first paragraph, even without the names, purely by the style of writing.

I have to somewhat agree.

I read a bestselling short story once about two mice, one of whom ventured out into the world to find a new place to live, while the other stayed put. The one who abandoned everything came out of it better in the end, and so the moral of the story was that we should all abandon what works in hopes of stumbling on to something better.

I detested the book, and will instantly have a lower opinion of someone if I see it in their bookshelf. It seems to me that it was written as a short story to avoid arguing for the decisions the characters make. raganwald's story was better, but still vulnerable to the story format, where dei ex machina reign supreme.

That said, story formats have strong advantages as well, such as capturing attention – but they don't come for free.

The author sees his time better spent addressing each comment rather than just do something simple like using the Posterous tagging feature. A 'fiction' tag would be sufficient and no one would be confused. I doubt the author would tolerate end-user confusion in his software, why defend it in this case? His blog is full of non-fictional, fictional, opinion, etc. There is no obvious delineation for those who don't read his material and the fix is easy.

Further reinforced by your choice of names: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertie_Wooster

Saying that I think the story really happened is an exaggeration in my case. Obviously I recognized that the story was false strongly enough for me to know that I should put my skepticism filters on. I knew intellectually the story didn't happen soon after starting reading, from the style of writing. But it took extra, conscious effort to ensure that that understanding was shared by my more base word-understanding mind, too. Basically, I read in words as truth, and have to manually tag each thought as "dubious" after reading them. Or perhaps I would still disbelieve what I read even if I didn't consciously attempt to disbelieve it, but consciously disbelieving what I read is a much-practiced habit that I would find hard to stop, so I still prefer straightforwardly-presented arguments to fictional-story arguments.

Apart from that misunderstanding, I do find it plausible that, as you hypothesize, most people need less effort to disbelieve what they read than me.

I'm beginning to feel the style is a bit overwrought. Once in a while, it's ok. I feel as though the style is. Wing overused. Just personal preference I guess.

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